Google

Capital One

Bloomberg

Pinterest

John Whalen, PhD

CEO, AI Research Leader, Cognitive Scientist, O'Reilly Author

Cohort 1

April 2025

Cohort 2

May 2025

August 2025

November 2025

July 2025

October 2025

September 2025

Schedules alternate by cohort to support multiple time zones. This cohort meets in the afternoon (ET).


March 2026

Schedules alternate by cohort to support multiple time zones. This cohort meets afternoons (ET).

April 2026

Schedules alternate by cohort to support multiple time zones. This cohort meets evenings (ET).


June 2026

July 2026

September 2026

Schedules alternate to support multiple time zones. This cohort meets 7-9 pm (EDT).

January 2027

November 2026

June 2025

Schedules alternate by cohort to support multiple time zones. This cohort meets in the evening (ET).


February 2026

Product managers who drive strategy, development, and launch of products.

Designers who craft user experiences, interfaces, and visual design.

Marketers who drive brand awareness, customer acquisition, and growth across channels.

Applying AI tools and techniques to professional workflows — assign alongside more specific AI topics.

Conducting user interviews, surveys, and usability studies to understand customer needs and validate decisions.

Gain hands-on mastery of AI research tools and frameworks to deliver trusted insights faster while maintaining the rigor that matters.

AI Research Expert | Johns Hopkins PhD

PhD. O'Reilly author. Host of AI for UX, where I interview AI tool founders.

AI for Customer Research: Deliver Trusted Insights at Scale

Adjunct Faculty

Freelance Researcher

Building autonomous AI agent systems that take actions, use tools, and orchestrate multi-step workflows.

User experience design — information architecture, interaction design, usability, and end-to-end experience flows.

Learn to build AI agents and workflows—developing judgment for what works, what doesn't, and how to adapt as capabilities evolve.

John Whalen

Agentic AI for Research: Build Custom Workflows & Synthetic Users

Senior User Insights Manager

Team Lead Product Research

User Experience Research Leader

Product Design Manager

Principle Program Manager

Insight & Research Manager

Consumer Insight Manager

UX Researcher

The researchers I talk to feel two things at once: overwhelmed by the pace of AI, and watching real possibilities open up that didn't exist two years ago.Both are true. AI lets you run 500 interviews across 12 countries in a week. It surfaces patterns across thousands of sessions. It opens research to teams who never had budget for it. Synthetic users let you pressure-test ideas in hours. These are new ways of working.But how do you trust the output? Which tools deliver, and which produce confident nonsense?That's the shift this course is built around: from doing research one study at a time to orchestrating systems that scale. You'll get hands-on with the platforms researchers actually use (Listen Labs, Coloop, Marvin, Synthetic Users), hear from the founders building them, and build the judgment to know what holds up.This is Course 1 of 2 in the Certified Agentic Research Specialist program — your foundation. Course 2, Agentic AI for Research, builds on it. The researchers pulling ahead are orchestrators — conducting research with more reach, impact, and confidence than before.No hype. Just what works.

Create Customer Insights with AI You Can Actually Trust

Conduct AI-moderated customer interviews confidently

Extract insights from 50+ interviews using AI-powered analysis tools

Develop frameworks to assess new AI tools and know when they actually work

Use synthetic users for rapid testing and validation of ideas before launch

Guide your team or organization in adopting AI research tools and best practices

Connect with practitioners navigating AI research together and sharing insights

You've worked with customer insights in some capacity—whether you've conducted research yourself, collaborated with researchers on your team

Experience with customer research or user feedback

This is a practical course with weekly exercises using AI platforms. You'll need time to experiment and apply what you learn.

Willingness to try new tools hands-on

We use tools and prompting techniques that don't require any coding knowledge. If you can write clear instructions, you're ready.

No technical background required

Researchers seeking to deliver insights faster at scale using AI—while maintaining the quality and rigor that makes their work trustworthy.

PMs and research leaders balancing the need for rapid customer insights with concerns about maintaining quality, rigor, and team standards.

Designers seeking practical AI tools to understand users, test concepts, and make evidence-based design decisions with confidence and speed.

PayPal

You've been prompting ChatGPT and Claude. Maybe you've also used Listen Labs, or Marvin. But you've hit two ceilings: prompting stops when the prompt does, and SaaS is built for typical cases — it doesn't bend to your team's methodology or your industry's specifics.This course is what comes next.You'll build custom agents that read transcripts the way you would, every time. Assembly lines where one agent extracts themes, another flags contradictions, a third drafts synthesis. Synthetic experts and users informed by your real research data — not someone else's training set.The shift is from AI user to AI system designer. From researcher to research orchestrator.You'll build research systems with validation, traceability, and systematic evaluation. You'll learn when to trust autonomous execution — and when to keep humans in the loop. You'll deploy synthetic users with scientific rigor, not vibes. All using Claude Code or Codex: coding with words.No programming background required. Just willingness to think in systems.Course 2 of the Certified Agentic Research Specialist (CARS) credential. Take it alone, or pair with AI for Customer Research for the full designation.

Move Beyond Prompting. Build Agentic Research Systems.

Build AI Agents for Your Research Workflow

Create and Deploy Synthetic Users

Build Custom Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

Overcome the Technical Barrier

Orchestrate End-to-End Research Pipelines

Lead Advanced AI Research Initiatives

While not strictly required, Course 1 provides a strong foundation. You should be experienced with prompting AI and evaluating AI outputs.

Recommended: Completion of "AI for Customer Research"

Some agentic capabilities need Claude Code or Codex ($20/month). We'll guide you through setup.

Required: Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus subscription

You'll work with an IDE, terminal, and automation platforms. We provide onboarding for non-technical researchers. New to me too! --John

Willingness to learn new technical interfaces

Alumni from "AI for Customer Research" ready to build autonomous agents, synthetic users, and workflows that work independently.<pre><code class="language-markdown"></code></pre>

Experienced researchers wanting to explore frontier capabilities—building agents, deploying synthetic users, and pushing beyond limits.

Product managers and designers ready to harness agentic AI for research—no coding background required, just curiosity to learn.

Orchestrate Your Agentic Research Team

Get Synthetic Feedback You Can Trust

The AI Research Skills You Need for 2027

Create an AI Interview Analysis Pipeline

The AI Research Capability Stack

Build Your AI Research Coworker

AI vs Humans - A User Research Showdown

AI-Moderated Interviews – An Introductory Primer for Researchers

AI-Powered Analysis – A Primer for Researchers

Synthetic Users – A Primer for Researchers

The Future of UX Research Roles – A Primer for AI-Aware Researchers

Transform Your UX
Research with AI: Master
Prompt Engineering

Why this credential matters

What you'll be certified in 

Behind the credential 

Who this credential is for 

Prerequisites

What's included

Schedule & cohorts

Success stories

A note from John

Run AI SaaS studies and build custom agentic systems. Rare today. Critical tomorrow. 25% off standard pricing.

Certified Agentic Research Specialist

We run qualitative research for you — AI-moderated interviews, expert analysis, strategic deliverables.

Cognitive Scientist | CEO & Author

Done-for-You Qualitative Research

Turn mountains of customer feedback into strategic answers you can trust

Strategic answers you can trust, fast

Cognitive scientist, CEO & O'Reilly author · Top 100 Maven instructor

Your customers are telling you what to build, fix, and prioritize. It's sitting in survey responses, support tickets, app reviews, and NPS comments. But who has time to read through it all — and even if you did, would you know what to look for?Most people skim a handful of responses and go with their gut. Or they paste everything into ChatGPT and get a vague summary they can't really trust. Either way, the strategic signal stays buried.In this three-hour hands-on workshop, you'll build an AI-powered analysis pipeline that does what a senior researcher does — but in a fraction of the time:Extract specific findings from your raw feedback dataSynthesize patterns across hundreds of responses, with evidence countsVerify every claim against the original source — no hallucinations, no cherry-pickingProduce a strategic summary framed around what to do nextNo coding. No expensive tools. Just structured prompting techniques and text files you can reuse with any AI assistant.You'll leave with a working system — configured for your specific data and questions — and the skills to point it at your own feedback the same day.

Go from a pile of unread feedback to strategic answers you can trust and act on — in a single afternoon.

Finally get through your feedback backlog

Find what you didn't know to look for

Trust what the analysis tells you

Make AI think strategically — like you

Turn feedback into a decision, not another document

Never start from scratch again

Product managers and founders sitting on customer feedback they haven't had time to properly analyze

Designers, engineers, and startup teams who need customer insights but don't have a dedicated researcher

Researchers who want to accelerate their own analysis and give non-researcher partners a workflow they can run

John Whalen, PhD will transform your research with Agentic AI